Deep learning and AI for Sales People

If you’re a business leader with access to a technology budget,
over the past decade, there are a handful of phrases that have suddenly became
impossible to ignore. At this point, you have basically no choice but to act
like you really understand what they mean.

Here’s an inexhaustive list, in roughly the order that they blew up:

Big data

Predictive analytics

Data science

Machine learning

Deep learning

Artificial intelligence

At every conference, you’ll find some industry leader declaring “X is dead, Y
is the future”—where “X” and “Y” are both items from the list above, and
where both X and Y are neither dead nor the future.

The newest terms that have been thrown into the fray are probably Deep Learning
and Artificial Intelligence. And they are bandied about with reckless abandon.
What are they? What’s the difference between them? What’s the difference
between both of them and machine learning?

If these sound like questions you’re asking yourself, here’s what you need to
know to understand what’s going on.

Big data, predictive analytics, data science, and machine learning

All of these terms appear to have peaked in their popularity. They started to blow up in roughly
2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012, respectively, and at this point are so
oversaturated in their use in marketing material that people have basically
stopped using them. We’ve discussed each of them in the past, and our earlier posts
are worth checking out if you’re curious what they mean:

The terms that are hot these days are machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence.
In fact, I’d venture to say that machine learning is on its way out. Nonetheless, keep reading
to understand what each of them means.